First Step
by FaithDaria
Summary: Batman of the Justice Lords becomes a father.
1. Chapter 1

Title: First Step

Rating: 18, for dark situations

Genre: Drama

Spoilers: JLA: A Better World, parts 1 and 2; sort of for JLU: Epilogue

Summary: Batman of the Justice Lords becomes a father.

Prologue

He had spent almost two years in preparation: building the necessary equipment, gathering the materials in an occasionally illegal manner, and researching everything that even remotely touched upon the subject of human gestation. The planning had been meticulous, from the carefully chosen biological mother to the nutrient feed for the developing infant. After all, he was making the next Batman.

But all the reading in the world was insufficient warning for that first shrill cry at 3 am, the heart-stopping fearlessness of a toddler, or the unrestrained energy of a five-year old.

After three weeks with little Thomas Wallace Wayne he had dismantled the artificial womb and destroyed the remaining donor eggs, vowing to never do this again. At eighteen months the child had executed his first prison break, climbing out of his crib to play with his toys at five in the morning. Nothing could contain Tommy for long after that, and Bruce quickly became resigned to his small shadow. It was just as well that he had mostly retreated from public life, since he would have had a hard time fulfilling either of those roles with Tommy tagging along behind. His constant toddler companion would never have fit the hard-earned playboy image, and he could hardly be that ruthless as a businessman if he was changing diapers.

He protected the boy's identity with something close to paranoia, rarely taking him off the grounds. The other Justice Lords were still out there, after all, and by all accounts they blamed him for the loss of their powers. The idea of what Kent could do to Tommy scared him cold, to say nothing of what Hawkgirl might do in revenge for her lost wings. When they did go out in public, Bruce took great care to disguise his features and voice. He told his son it was a game, and, somewhat miraculously, the child never gave him away.

No one from Batman's circle knew about or had met the boy, and he meant to keep it that way. Only his lawyer and a carefully selected and very well paid retired pediatrician had met Tommy as the son of Bruce Wayne, at visits supervised by him at Wayne Manor. Bruce handled the boy's education himself. It was the only way he could be sure that Tommy would be ready for his responsibility when it came time.

For all his machinations, it was his own body that failed him and put everything he was building in jeopardy. After his first heart attack while on a mission as Batman, two years before his son was born, his Doctor had warned him that there was sure to be a second somewhere down the line. A lifetime of healthy living couldn't beat out genetics, it seemed. Bruce had thanked the man, filled his prescription, and began the groundwork that would eventually lead to Tommy. But no pill is fool-proof, and when Tommy was eight years old the long-awaited second heart attack arrived.

When it became apparent that the medication wasn't working, he hit the MedicAlert alarm and explained to his son what was happening and what the boy needed to do until it became too difficult for him to talk. Tommy was frightened enough to sit next to him without fidgeting, a possible sign of the apocalypse, and they stayed next to the door and waited for the ambulance together. Like it or not, Bruce reflected grimly, his well-kept secret was about to be blown wide open.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 1

Tommy sat on the hard chair and swung his legs back and forth while he waited for the doctors to fix his Daddy so they could go home. He didn't like the hospital very much - there were too many people and it smelled funny – but he wasn't scared anymore like he had been at the beginning. Daddy had said that everything would be all right, and Daddy was never wrong. But there wasn't anything to do, and he was bored. He'd tried playing the watching game, but it was no fun to play alone. Every time he tried to go in and talk to Daddy one of the nurses brought him back to the waiting room. The last nurse had finally thought to order him to stay there; all the others had asked him nicely, which didn't count. His Daddy had told him to obey the nurses when they told him to do something, so now he had to stay in the room all by himself, and the television was broken.

Daddy was always telling him to focus on what you could do, not what you couldn't. Tommy stood up and walked around the room. The nurse had said to stay in the room until someone came and got him. She didn't say anything else, which meant he could do anything he wanted as long as he stayed in the room. And the only thing in the room to play with was furniture. He tugged on one of the couch cushions, but it stayed in place. Then he tried to move the couch itself. With a few minutes of effort, it moved a couple of inches before catching on the carpet and refusing to budge further.

Playing with the furniture was out. Maybe he could play on it? He kicked off his shoes (his previous times in waiting rooms had taught him that most grown-ups don't like shoes on the furniture) and stood on the couch. He walked from one end of the couch to the other, and then stepped onto the table next to it. Could he go around the whole room without stepping on the floor?

He did three laps before deciding that it needed to be more interesting. It was much too easy to walk across the couch cushions and step onto the next piece of furniture. The boy surveyed the room from his perch on the arm of a couch, and then stepped up onto the back. It squished a little beneath his weight, but not nearly as much as the cushions. He stood there for a moment, finding his balance like his Daddy had taught him, and started around again, this time staying on the backs of all the couches and chairs. This was sufficiently tricky enough that it took seven trips around the room before becoming commonplace. He took the tables out of the game, making it so he had to jump across, and was finishing his first complete trip when the door opened.

Barbara sighed as she looked at the nurses' station. When she had gotten the call, she had been surprised, worried, and a little irritated. She hadn't spoken to Bruce in fifteen years (three months, one week and six days), and that particular discussion had ended in an argument with him about giving up Batman. She'd had no idea she was still listed as his next of kin, and being called because he'd had a heart attack was not the best way to find out. Straightening her shoulders, Detective Gordon walked to the desk and showed her ID to the young, harried-looking woman. "I'm Barbara Gordon. I'm Bruce Wayne's listed next-of-kin."

"Thank goodness you're here. We were starting to think we'd have to call social services."

"Or the circus," another nurse muttered.

The first nurse ignored the comment. "Mr. Wayne's doctor is still working on him. Perhaps you should look in on the boy while you're waiting."

Barbara frowned but nodded. It was one of Batman's cardinal rules: act like you know everything, because people will fill you in unintentionally. The young nurse led the way down the hall to a waiting room. "Don't mind Mason. The boy's been something of a handful. Keeps popping up in Mr. Wayne's room unexpectedly, wanting to know what's happening. The first time he showed up behind the nurses' counter Mason dropped her coffee, so now she's in a bad mood." An electronic chime interrupted the woman's cheerful patter, and she pulled a pager out of the pocket of her scrubs. "I have to go. The waiting room is on the left." With that, she bustled away, leaving Barbara on her own without having answered her questions. What boy? No one in his right mind would ever trust the crazy old man with a child.

Putting a little steel into her spine, she turned the corner and opened the door. The small boy tumbling in a controlled fall at her feet was unexpected, but when he looked up and she saw Bruce's eyes in that incredibly young face things suddenly clicked into place and the blood froze in her veins.

He didn't. He Iwouldn't./

But the evidence suggested he had.

The child recovered first. "You're not a nurse," he said, his chin coming up in a painfully familiar manner. "Can you take me to my daddy? I'm bored and I want to go home."

Barbara loathed Bruce Wayne in that moment, both for what he had done and for making her pick up after him. "Who is your father, young man?"

The expression on his face shifted into something remarkably opaque for someone so young. "If you don't know, I'm not supposed to tell you."

She sighed. Of course Bruce would subject the kid to his own special brand of paranoia. It came as a shock that he didn't whip out a child-sized Batarang. "Bruce Wayne is your father," Barbara said. It came out resigned. Bruce Wayne was this boy's father, and she was now stuck with a mess that could bring down untold amounts of trouble onto her head. If Dick found out, the resulting explosion would probably level both Gotham and Bludhaven. "Let's go talk to him."

The boy beamed, an expression he definitely didn't get from his father, and grabbed her hand in an odd show of trust. Apparently anyone that would take him to see Bruce went to the top of the clearance list. He pulled her down the hall and into a large private room, making the turns without error or hesitation. Obviously he'd been this way more than once.

Once he was in the room, the child let go of her hand and ran to the figure propped up on the bed, pushing past the doctor and climbing into the chair nearby.

Barbara spent several long moments wondering who this old man was in Bruce Wayne's room before it clicked. The frail man with lines on his face and thinning white hair, smiling almost gently as the young boy chattered away at him, was the indomitable Batman.

She stepped further into the room and both sets of pale blue eyes were instantly on her. "Bruce."

"Barbara." His face gave nothing away, as usual, but the hand on the boy's arm tightened briefly before relaxing. "I see you met Tommy."

"We were never exactly introduced." Barbara clenched her fists at her side, suddenly furious with the man before her. How could he do this to this boy? For that matter, how could he put her in this situation in the first place? "So where'd you get him, Bruce?"

The old man (old, for heaven's sake, old and frail and just wrong wrong wrong) looked down at the boy. "Tommy, can you go to the nurse station and get us both some juice? I need to have a grown-up conversation with Detective Gordon."

There was a familiar stubborn expression on those small features, and Barbara was struck yet again by the notion that she was looking at Bruce Wayne in miniature. "I just got here."

"You can come back in a few minutes. Maybe one of the nurses will give you a snack as well."

"I don't want a snack," the child said, and scratch the miniature Bruce Wayne, she was looking at a mini-Bat with a full-on glare. "I want to stay here with you."

"Tommy." The boy's defiance wilted at his name. "I need five minutes alone with Detective Gordon. Go to the nurse station." Tommy trudged reluctantly from the room, Bruce watching him with a look of mixed exasperation and fondness that seemed utterly out of place on the old man's face.

"I need someone to watch over him until I get out of the hospital," Bruce said calmly once the boy was gone. He didn't address the question she had asked before.

Barbara stared, amazed at the nerve of the man. "I was thinking more along the lines of calling Family Services about the both of you," she bit out. "There's no way you should be allowed near a child, especially not this one this young. God knows how badly he's already been screwed up."

Bruce looked at her, the same irritatingly implacable calm on his face as before. "You can't do that."

"Give me one reason why not."

"Kent." The name was said with that annoyingly even, seemingly reasonable tone, but Barbara was well-versed in both Bruce Wayne and Batman and she could hear that slight crack in a veneer that masked worry and even a little fear. "If you publicly connect Tommy with Bruce Wayne, no force on earth will be able to protect him. Kent will find him and kill him. He'll probably take out whatever happy, normal family the boy's been placed with as well."

It was the tinge of desperation underlying his words that brought the woman up short, rather than his dire prediction. Bruce Wayne was a master actor who had managed to fool an untold number of people into believing he was nothing more than a billionaire playboy, but she had been trained, by him no less, at seeing through those kinds of facades and discerning the truth. This was the truth, lying behind a mask of control and equanimity: He was terrified of losing the boy, either to death or the well-intentioned people behind Social Services.

"I'll do it," she said, even while a part of her mind cried out in protest. She'd been free of Batman and Bruce Wayne for more than a decade, built a life separate from her identity as Batgirl, and this particular complication was not something she wanted back in her well-ordered life. But as she watched Bruce relax for the first time since she'd come into the room, Barbara realized that once again, what she wanted didn't matter as much as what he needed.

Damn it, this is why she should never have taken the call from the hospital in the first place. She knew she was getting sucked into Bruce and his goddamned aura and the way he could simultaneously be the greatest man she knew and the biggest dick in existence. She knew that by giving him what he wanted, she was giving up some of herself. And she couldn't stop.

What the hell was she going to do with an eight-year-old boy?

Tommy was both everything she expected and nothing like she would have believed, just like his father (and Barbara had to believe that this child was the biological son of Bruce Wayne, despite the man's determined avoidance of the question). He was controlled, far more than any kid his age had the right to be, self-contained and disciplined to a fault, and so unbelievably quick on the uptake that if she closed her eyes and ignored the pitch of the voice Barbara could have been speaking to Dick Grayson, back when he was a teenager and the job and life hadn't turned him cynical.

Then he would follow up some insanely insightful observation with a round of bright, cheerful chatter that she would have previously called the sign of a healthy, well-adjusted kid.

It didn't make sense. Barbara knew the signs of a child in trouble, how a boy who was in some form of abuse should act or react. Tommy was practically a poster-child for how to raise kids in a non-traditional fashion, when he should have issues visible from space. Somehow the most broken adult she knew had raised a normal, happy child, and she had no idea how he had accomplished it.

Well, not exactly normal, she amended after walking into the living room to find him executing a one-handed handstand. Tommy smiled brightly and fell into a roll that neatly avoided all the furniture. "Can I have lunch now? I haven't had anything to eat since this morning, and I'm really hungry."

Lunch. She could handle food. It wasn't that hard, even though she hadn't gotten much in the way of groceries over the past couple of weeks. Had it been three? She wasn't really home much, had most of her meals at the station.

It might be four weeks. Damn.

There was some uncooked rice in the cupboard, a remnant of her aborted attempt to learn how to fix Chinese, and a door full of half-empty condiment bottles and three containers of mold-spotted leftover takeout in the fridge. "How about pizza?" Barbara reached for the phone and a flyer.

"What's pizza?"

Barbara blinked. She wasn't sure why she was surprised; Bruce probably had the kid on some macrobiotic organic diet that prohibited the delights of pizza and macaroni and cheese and other childhood goodies. He probably wouldn't appreciate her corrupting his son, but he probably should have thought of that before he shanghaied her into babysitting. "Kid, I have so much to teach you."

Tommy ended up spending a week with her before Bruce managed to finagle his release from the hospital and bring home a nurse, and the close calls and near misses perpetrated by the boy aged Barbara five years within that time frame. It was no wonder Bruce had a heart attack; trying to keep up with this particular eight-year-old was more than enough for any two people, let alone an elderly billionaire with a heart problem.

It had been hard to walk into Wayne Manor after such a long time. They'd come over briefly so that Tommy could pack a bag, but she'd had a goal and something to focus on then. This time she didn't have such a welcome distraction. Once they'd gone through the door and Tommy had raced off to his father's room, Barbara found herself at loose ends and ended up following him up the familiar stairs.

The old man was settled back against the pillows of his own bed, and Tommy curled up next to him in an oddly gently fashion as the boy filled his father in on everything that had happened during his week-long stay at her apartment. Something about the way they both radiated contentment brought a lump to her throat, so she cleared it and stepped out of the room to talk to the home-nurse that had been arranged. Deirdre had been here earlier in the week to arrange the bedroom and had struck up an odd kinship with Barbara as one of the few people who could put up with Bruce's bullshit. "How's he really doing?'

The nurse set the tray down on a table that Barbara remembered from the old days. She wondered what had happened to the Egyptian urn that used to grace the polished wood. "He's doing as well as can be expected," the woman finally said. She was dressed in practical, colorful scrubs and looked out of place within the confines of the gloomy mansion. "There'll be a long way to go as he heals, and there's no telling if he'll ever be where he was before. Damage to the human body is cumulative, and this wasn't his first time around."

Barbara nodded like this was what she expected, although she planned to corner Bruce later and find out why he hadn't seen fit to share this bit of information. "What does he need?"

"More consistent help," the nurse answered immediately. "Someone to help with the household tasks, do most of the driving, and take care of the boy. There's a reason that people usually have children when they're younger and better able to keep up." She did a remarkable job of not asking about the boy's mother, which was a good thing since Barbara couldn't answer those questions. "Once he's back on his feet, he won't really need a nurse so much as an assistant, someone who can fit into his routine and make the adjustments necessary."

"I'll talk to him about it." It was the most she could promise, although she was hopeful that Bruce would see the logic of it and make the necessary concessions. The real problem would not be convincing him; Bruce had a way with cold logic that she could bend to her purposes. While he had little interest in caring for himself when he was the only one at stake, Tommy's presence altered things considerably. He would agree eventually.

Finding someone qualified for such a unique position would prove far more difficult. A regular nurse wouldn't be enough for Bruce's needs: the only way she would be able to truly sell it would be as a bodyguard and teacher for Tommy. The usual resources would be entirely useless when someone connected to a former hero found out that they would be taking care of a man who participated in the subjugation of a chunk of the free world, and it would be pointless to hope that such a person wouldn't find out. Better to bring someone in that they knew could be trusted from the start. She would have to think about it. "What about for right now?"

"I'll be here for a few weeks, helping Mr. Wayne get back on his feet." She hesitated, glancing at Barbara out of the corner of her eye as she straightens items on the tray, and Barbara's internal alarms start blaring. This woman is about to ask for something. "Can you help with the boy, if we need it? I'm not very good with kids."

INeither am I,/I Barbara thought. Except this particular one seemed to like her, had managed not to piss her off too much in the seven days they spent together, and was already on his way from annoying kid to interesting person. Damn it, when did she become such a pushover? "I'll help out if you need it, but he's a pretty good kid." Barbara debated about handing over a piece of hard-earned knowledge before deciding that the woman was spending forced time with a cranky Bruce Wayne and could use all the help she could get. "The trick to making the kid cooperate is to be specific and make it an order. He'll sneak around the spirit of any request you make." That had been made evident when she'd woken up the first morning with her living room converted into a set of tents, courtesy of the boy's bedding.

The list of people who were qualified to help Bruce and his young protégé started out quite long and grew quickly and progressively shorter as Barbara went along. The Justice Lords had caused a great deal of damage to the world in general, but they'd done even more harm to the hero community. People didn't trust heroes anymore, thanks to the Lords. If you wore a cape or had a superhuman ability, you kept it locked down tight. Even Barbara, with her extensive ties to the old hero underground, had only a slight notion of any current capes. Luckily, she wasn't looking for anyone currently fighting the good fight, though that didn't make her quarry any easier to find.

When it was all said and done, she had to adjust her parameters to people who the Lords had hurt the least, and who had no specific grudge against Batman. That list was a little more promising than the end result of the first one, but only barely. Barbara Gordon had been cleaning up the Justice Lords' mess for the last thirty years, and even she had never quite understood the scope of their actions until now.

In the end it came down to a handful of names, with one in particular at the top of the list. This one would be good at keeping secrets, had no particular feelings toward Batman, and would claw out her own eyeballs before she'd give Kent the satisfaction of knowing about Tommy. As a bonus, she was one of the few who knew Batman's secret identity.

Barbara settled her shoulders, took a deep breath, and called Chloe Sullivan.

It took time and cunning and the kind of sneaky maneuvers the bat-family was known for, but Barbara eventually managed to get a chance to talk to Bruce in private. Tommy, after all, was still an eight-year-old boy and the need to move and run and release all his excess energy was hardwired into his system. Even Bruce Wayne's child had to leave his side to play sometime. Normally she was the one who monitored his time in Bruce's home gym and made sure that he didn't hurt himself while using anything there, but she'd asked Deirdre to handle it while she had the discussion she'd been putting off for a while.

"This is going to be one of _those_ conversations, isn't it?" he asked when she closed the door and came over to sit beside the bed. There was a faint sheen of sweat on his face from the most recent round of rehab and a slight tremble in his hands, but none of that diminished the man propped up in bed.

Barbara nodded. "You're going to need someone around all the time, Bruce. Deirdre is leaving as soon as you're back on your feet, and I can't be here anymore than I already am."

"I can't replace Alfred." His eyes were shuttered off, cold, and she had a feeling that he was equal parts Wayne and Batman right now.

"I'm not asking you to. Alfred can't be replaced, but that doesn't mean you can't have anyone else here ever again." She closed her eyes and prepared to strike the low blow. "It isn't fair to Tommy. Heart damage adds up, and you might never be back up to par. Someone has to help protect him."

Bruce sighed. From anyone else, it would have sounded petulant. "Who do you have in mind?"

Barbara told him, and Bruce considered the name for a long time, long enough that Tommy came back into the room and eventually settled back down with his Japanese lesson. "Call her," he said finally, and turned his attention to the boy.

Barbara wisely didn't mention that she already had. Chloe was on her way.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 2

Wayne Manor was still a stately, looming shadow on the outskirts of Gotham City. Chloe had always privately thought that Bruce encouraged the image by having people arrive at dusk, when the bats came out of their natural cave to go hunting. The man was sneaky that way, and had always secretly enjoyed putting people off their stride.

Barbara was waiting at the door when she pulled up, and Chloe forced herself not to react to the woman's appearance. She hadn't seen the former Batgirl since the younger woman had hung up the cape, and wasn't quite expecting the silver hair and lines around her eyes. Chloe's life was much more isolated and nomadic than it used to be, and she had somehow forgotten that normal people aged. It was stupid and self-centered of her, but there you were.

The larger question was, if Barbara had aged this much what had the time done to Bruce? It had been at least ten years since Batman had disappeared, and if Bruce Wayne hadn't still been appearing in the public eye for the first few years afterward she would have worried that the life had caught up to him like it had the others.

"I'm here," she said as she stepped into the foyer of the mansion. "What do you need?"

"Now that's a long story," Barbara drawled. "Coffee?"

"Please." Chloe followed her into the kitchen, which was much as she remembered it. She would let this unfold in Barbara's time. It didn't do to rush a member of the bat-family.

There was already a pot waiting when they stepped inside, and for a brief moment Chloe almost expected to see Alfred come into the room and offer to pour, fussing over the fact that Master Bruce's guests were serving themselves in his kitchen.

"First thing's first," Barbara began. "Where is Kent?"

"Still in Argentina, as of this afternoon. He hasn't started anything recently." Humanity was starting to wear on Kent (not Clark, never Clark, and not Superman anymore either) and he'd spent most of the last decade working on a ranch in the mountains. She'd gone there, once, to make sure that he wasn't pulling a con and using the people there to start up a new base of power. It looked like he'd finally gotten what he wanted when he was younger and was living like a normal guy. She had almost spoken to him, but it would have been awkward and strange and she still hadn't really forgiven him for everything that he had done.

"Shayera?"

"Hasn't left Ireland in the past year. I've been keeping an eye on her, just to make sure that she doesn't start a war simply because she's bored, but she's been pretty quiet. And before you ask, Diana just moved to India. She's been studying the gods there." That was all the Lords accounted for. The Green Lantern Corps had taken John Stewart away shortly after everything had happened and whatever they had done had kept him away ever since, and the Martian hadn't survived without his powers. "What's this all about?"

Barbara set her cup down carefully. "Bruce had a heart attack last week, apparently his second. The hospital called me because Bruce never removed my name from the next of kin. And when I got there, I found this little boy there, eight years old, with bright blue eyes. Goes by the name Thomas Wallace Wayne."

Oh boy. "He didn't."

The other woman shrugged. "He did."

"If word gets out that Bruce Wayne has a son . . ."

"The kid won't be safe. And that's why I called you."

"What do you expect _me_ to do about it?"

"Bruce can't do everything he needs to do anymore. There will be another heart attack someday, and that might be the one that kills him. Maybe the one after that. Hell, maybe it'll be some other thing entirely. Tommy is a pretty good kid, but he's still only eight and he needs more than Bruce can physically give him right now, and I can't be the one to help."

"So hire someone. Bruce has the money."

Barbara straightened in her seat and gave a fairly good approximation of Bruce's own glare. "I can't invite a stranger in here. Not because of Bruce's secrets or to salvage his ego or save money. This is still our sanctuary."

Part of Chloe wanted to jump on that _our_, point out that Barbara had hung up Batgirl's costume years ago, way before Bruce had apparently been forced to hang up his own. This had never been her home either, much like Kent Farm had never belonged to Chloe.

Except that both of those places were home, in some way. Chloe had wept when Martha died and the farm was sold, though she'd never spent more than a few weeks of cumulative time under its roof and despite the fact that it was a painful reminder of Clark. She knew that Barbara had shed tears in a similar fashion when it was clear she was no longer welcome at Wayne Manor after Alfred's funeral.

"Let me talk to Bruce first," she said after a minute or so of contemplation. "Who knows? He might not want me here either." There wasn't much chance that Bruce wasn't going to put his stamp of approval on her presence; she wouldn't be here if he hadn't already become accustomed to the idea. But she needed to talk to him, and this way she would know exactly whose child she could be raising. Because she could probably handle Bruce Wayne's heir, but after everything that had happened she doubted her abilities when it came to bringing up Batman.

The staircase was the same, the hallway to the master bedroom little altered, and Chloe had to fight to keep from being overwhelmed by the memories. She and Bruce had never been involved romantically, exactly, but it had been a near thing. If there was one basic flaw in the underlying structure of Chloe Sullivan, it was her weakness for heroes. Bruce had reminded her of both Clark and Oliver, back when they were all young and not quite so hopelessly cynical. Love him or hate him, there was something undeniable there. She needed to tread cautiously.

There was a nurse leaving the room as she approached the door, her brightly-patterned scrubs looking incongruous in Wayne Manor, and Chloe smiled and nodded as they passed each other. She could feel the woman's eyes on the back of her head as she walked into the room without knocking. "Just like you to screw up my schedule, Bruce."

There was a slight shrugging, with a repressed wince that only someone who spent their adult lives babysitting stubborn men would have picked up. He looked older, of course, but seeing Barbara downstairs had given her enough time to prepare for that to some extent. Age didn't make him any less dangerous should he choose to be. "How was New York?" he asked, like they'd just been separated for a week rather than more than twenty years.

"Crowded, noisy, and full of pushy people," she replied.

"So in other words, exactly the way you like it."

"You know it." Chloe glanced at the small boy, who was paying far too much attention to the book in his hands. "It's been a long time, Bruce."

"Not that you could tell by looking at you," he replied, a little gruffly, and Chloe had to work to keep herself from flinching. Bruce had always known how to hit home with even the most seemingly complimentary language. There was an odd expression on his face that took a moment or two for her to categorize, and it surprised her a little when she finally placed the embarrassment on his face. "I've been keeping up with your work. You're still the best there is."

"It's hard to overcome a lifetime of ferreting out secrets," the woman said with a shrug. "Are you going to introduce us?"

There was a slight tilt to his head before he turned his attention to the child. "Tommy, meet Chloe Sullivan. She's an old friend of mine. Chloe, Thomas Wallace Wayne."

Tommy had looked up when Bruce said his name, looking first at his father and then settling his eyes on Chloe. She had a brief start when she saw Bruce's pale blue eyes looking out of that innocent face, but she'd seen pictures of Bruce at this age and he was far from a carbon copy. "It's nice to meet you," he said cautiously, and Chloe felt herself smile almost involuntarily. She'd always been a sucker for shy, polite boys.

"It's a pleasure to meet you as well," she said. She glanced over at Bruce, who was watching the exchange with unveiled interest. "I feel like Obi-Wan Kenobi meeting Anakin Skywalker, Bruce. All I need is a lightsaber." There was a familiar quirk to his lips, and she hurried to qualify it a little. "Not that they even exist, and if Wayne Industries had found a way to create them, I didn't hear about it. Nope." She watched as Bruce's lips twitched again, and smiled to herself. I_Success_./I

"What's a lightsaber?"

Chloe looked from Bruce to the child and back again, mock astonishment on her face. "Bruce, your educational plan is severely lacking. We'll have to fix that." The words were out of her mouth before she'd thought them through, and she wanted to kick herself for saying it like that. She wanted to have a serious discussion with the man about what he was planning, but despite her reputation for logic and investigation she'd always followed her instincts, and they were telling her to stay with the boy. It wasn't for Bruce's sake; those bridges had been burnt long ago. Something about Tommy called to her and she wasn't sure what it was. Just that she wanted to know more.

The old man then chose that opportunity to reveal that he could still read her with only a modicum of effort and gently sent the boy down to the kitchen to get a snack. Barbara knew them both well enough to keep both Tommy and the nurse occupied downstairs, and the two of them watched as the child reluctantly left the room and headed down the stairs.

"I'm going to do this, Bruce," Chloe said, turning back to face him. "I'll stay here and help. But I want one thing to be clear: I'm not helping you build a new Batman. You want help raising your son, I'm with you all the way. But that boy isn't going to be molded into Superman's accomplice."

"You don't think the world needs Batman?"

"Of course it does!" She stood up and started pacing. "We need our heroes again. But you gave up your right to be called a hero. You destroyed Batman with the things you did, Bruce. You are just as responsible as Superman for the things that happened, and you don't get to try it over again. I won't stop him from it if he chooses that life when he's older, but Tommy's not going to be brought up just to carry on your mission."

Bruce was quiet for a long time, his eyes on the stack of books beside the bed. "When I first made the arrangements, that was my intention. Gotham needed Batman and I was no longer suitable for the job, so I would make a new one." Bruce took a sip of water from the table by his bed, one of the few signs of weakness he would allow to slip through. "But beyond everything else, he's my son, Chloe. I need to protect him until he can protect himself, and keeping Kent and Shayera and Diana from knowing that he exists is the best way I can do it. You know what will happen if Kent finds out Bruce Wayne has a son."

"Clark was my best friend for almost thirty years," Chloe said, meeting Bruce's eyes no matter how much it hurt to be regarded with such scrutiny. "I thought I knew everything about him that was worth knowing, more than anyone else ever knew, and then you let Superman kill off that part of him until there was only Kal-El. And once the human part of him was extinguished, your actions led to him losing the parts that were alien. I will never get my best friend back. So yes, I know exactly what will happen if Kent finds out about Tommy. And that's why I'm going to help you." She tilted her head and studied him for a moment. "And Bruce, you will most definitely be paying for the privilege, even if it's only information."

"Agreed."

Chloe did not slip into their lives smoothly, because it wasn't in her nature to slip in anywhere unnoticed unless that was the only way to get the job done. She came in with a carful of possessions, moving into one of the rooms that had been mostly unoccupied for at least two generations and instantly rearranging everything about the room. Her cooking skills were on par with Bruce's, which is to say nearly nonexistent, so she ended up heading down into the city several times a week to get meals and try to pick up some simple things that she could prepare with little effort. Often she took Tommy out with her, dragging him along to Chinatown or Little Italy and letting him explore whatever nook of Gotham she was visiting that day.

She argued with Bruce about everything, starting with Tommy's need for friends his own age, and won that particular one after meeting only a token resistance. That battle was followed up by a concentrated effort to get him using a cane. Bruce had been hard on his body for most of his adult life, and now it was starting to show in arthritis around his old breaks and an increasing stiffness in his joints. A cane would make it easier for him to get around, but of course he had to be convinced that using one wouldn't be a sign of weakness. That fight was only won once he'd mastered all the different ways to use the thing as a weapon.

There were "discussions" on anything from current politics and economics to dissecting history and noting where different leaders had probably gone wrong. Chloe disagreed with Bruce in almost every way, and sometimes she wondered how they could live in the same house without driving each other crazy. Granted, the bulk of these disagreements were begun both to pass the time and to teach Tommy in a more interesting fashion.

It was when she told Bruce that she wanted to take Tommy to Smallville for a few days that she met the first real obstinance from the boy's father. It took three weeks and a carefully laid out plan of what she wanted to do before he relented.

She had to admit that it was a risk. To her knowledge, Kent wasn't in contact with anyone from his old life, but there was still an off chance that someone would recognize her and put something together. There was a slight possibility that this particular excursion would lead to exposure, which was one of the reasons she hadn't introduced Tommy to her cousin, and exposure meant danger at this stage. But the lessons that waited in Smallville were too important to avoid, so Chloe eventually convinced the man that it was necessary and headed off with her young charge in tow.

The Talon was still there and still the only place for teenagers to hang out that didn't involve mud and hay. The bed and breakfast remained the only lodging in town if you didn't know someone, and as it would be a bad idea to advertise that Chloe Sullivan was in town and appeared forty years younger than she should, she didn't want to plug into any of those contacts.

Tommy looked around Smallville with the same wide-eyed fascination that he'd shown in Chinatown. He'd never been outside of an urban setting in his young life, which meant that cows and fields and fruit trees were just as foreign as Kairi Tanaga's dojo. Chloe made sure that he got a good sense of what this part of the world was all about and how it was important to places like Gotham and Metropolis before the real lesson began. She wasn't entirely sure if any of these things would stick as much as the memory of playing in the mud, but it was definitely worth the effort.

She took him out to Chandler's field one night, which was already a novelty since Bruce insisted on a strict bedtime (and Chloe loved to laugh at the irony of that statement). The old windmill was still there, although in desperate need of repair, and the two of them listened to it creak as they looked up at the stars. "Do you know why I brought you out here, kiddo?"

"No."

"It was partly so your father could have a little time to himself. He needs a chance to heal, and without us there to distract him he'll be able to do it a little faster. But it's not the only reason."

"Is it because you're from here?" She looked over at him sharply, and he rolled his eyes. "You know your way around without looking at a map, Chloe. Like Dad knows Gotham."

Chloe shook her head. "Sometimes you're too smart for your own good. Yes, I grew up here, a long time ago. And I like to come back every once in a while. The places like Smallville are just as important as Gotham or Metropolis or New York, and that's because of the people here." She hesitated for a moment, her arm around the boy while she tried to think of the right way to say this. "One of the best people I ever knew lived here once upon a time, and I miss him even more than Smallville sometimes. This kind of place is what keeps Gotham running, and it needs to be kept safe at all costs."

"What happened to your friend?"

"He died," she said simply. Tommy wasn't ready for even a diluted version of that story yet, and she wasn't really prepared to tell it. "Are you ready to head back? If your dad finds out that I kept you out this late, we'll both be hearing about it."

"Can we stay for a few more minutes?" There was a slight whine at the end of the words, but Chloe chose to ignore it for the moment. She nodded and waited while he stared up at the night sky. It shouldn't surprise her, since he was most definitely his father's son, but Tommy loved the dark more than any child had the right to.

They returned to Gotham in the middle of a thunderstorm, which had Chloe mourning the loss of central Kansas' Indian summer as she pulled the car into the garage of Wayne Manor. Tommy was out of his seat and heading into the house before she had the engine turned off, and Chloe rolled her eyes and grabbed the bags out of the trunk. Sometimes she missed the days when she had her pick of young superheroes to fetch and carry. Feminism is all well and good, but the simple joy of having someone else carry your bags into the house was a nice thing to have every once in a while.

Bruce was in his gym, of course, using the training bars to walk back and forth. His left leg was clearly bothering him again, and she wondered if he was avoiding the cane while they were gone. The interactions she had experienced with Alfred back in the old days led to the conclusion that Bruce did best when gently prompted into the desired action rather than nagging or a more subtle form of manipulation. That method worked best for Alfred, of course, but Chloe was starting to work out her own special mechanisms. She had lifelong experience with stubborn men.

Tommy was babbling to his father, filling him in on all that had happened while they were apart, like they hadn't talked every night while she and Tommy were in Kansas. "Take your bag upstairs, kiddo. I'll make sure your dad doesn't run off until you get back." She watched as he reluctantly moved away from his father, grabbed his backpack and darted off into the dark recesses of the house. "I take it the two of you missed each other."

Bruce shrugged. "The house was quiet while you were gone," was the most he would admit. "I take it the trip was a success?"

"I think so. No one from Smallville recognized me." She touched her currently red hair. "This probably helped. I think I'll keep it for a while."

"Do you think Tommy could handle more travel?"

"He seemed to like it. What do you have in mind?"

"Jason Blood has agreed to give him a little bit of training if we come to him."

Chloe turned serious in a heartbeat. "We had an agreement about training, Bruce."

"He needs to know how to protect himself. Kairi can't take him on for another year and the other things he's learning aren't enough. Jason promised to teach Tommy just enough for him to know when to run, and that's something he needs."

"I'm not sure I want to be a part of this. He's only eight years old, Bruce."

"Nearly nine. He's inheriting a lot of enemies from me, Chloe. The least I can do is give him the tools to defend himself when they come calling."

Chloe felt her resolve waver with the simple truth of the statement and forced anger into its place instead. "So this would be the reason you let me take him to Smallville."

"I agreed with you that Tommy needed to see why places like that are important, and Smallville seemed as good a place as any. You know your way around and knew who could be trusted there in an emergency. And now he has an opportunity to learn some new ways to defend himself."

"I'm not helping you build a better vigilante, Bruce," she seethed. "We had an agreement about this kind of thing. If he chooses it later on, fine, but you promised me that there would be no leading him to it."

"These are skills that he can use when he assumes control of Wayne Enterprises," the man replied with maddening calm. "Jason assured me that he would monitor Tommy closely and only show him enough that he'll be able to recognize it should someone attempt to use magic against him or anyone he works with."

In an agonizing moment of clarity, Chloe saw the future offered by giving in to this request. After Jason Blood, Bruce would want Tommy to spend some time learning how to read people, probably from some forensic profiler who owed him a favor. Then there would be more martial arts training, and studying different world governments, and spending some time with Barbara so that he would know about police procedure. Every single time he would roll out some completely logical reasoning for how Tommy would need the knowledge when he came of age, and she would give in to the logic and help make it happen.

Somehow Chloe Sullivan had forgotten that Bruce Wayne was one of the most cold-blooded, manipulative bastards she had ever met. She had no idea how to break this pattern, but she was pretty sure that it had to happen right now, before it achieved some sort of momentum. If she gave in to this course of action now there would be no way to prevent it from happening again and again.

"He isn't you, Bruce," she finally said. "You can't make Tommy into some sort of Xerox version of Batman. It isn't going to work like that. All it's going to do is piss him off when he learns the truth, and you better believe that someday he'll figure everything out."

"That's not what I'm doing."

"It sure seems like it is. Everything you two do together looks like one more step in making Tommy your perfect little Bat-clone."

"Why would I ever want a copy of myself?" Bruce's voice was bitter as he limped over to the bench against the wall.

"Well, you're going to have one if you don't stop pushing. Let him be a kid, Bruce. Let him make friends and enjoy himself once in a while. Jason is immortal; he isn't going anywhere. Wait a few years before you spring magic on your son." Chloe waited for a moment, oddly unsure about this next step. "Tommy doesn't need to know what you learned when your parents died."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 3

The things she said must have had some sort of impact on the man, because things got a little easier after that. Only a little, after all, since he was still Bruce Wayne and part of him would always be Batman, but that tiny bit of gentling made an unbelievable difference. As Bruce began to recover more thoroughly from the heart attack, the three of them began to go out together. Tommy had a carefully constructed cover as her son and she was ostensibly Bruce's personal assistant, so there was at least a bit of plausible deniability present, but when some enterprising paparazzo snapped a picture outside the Museum of Natural History on Tommy's ninth birthday Chloe knew that there would be some phone calls in her future.

It probably shouldn't have surprised her that Oliver Queen skipped that step and showed up at Wayne Manor.

Being the person he was, Oliver probably wouldn't have bothered knocking if it hadn't been for the heavy gates outside the manor. Chloe buzzed him in after only a moment of debate; whatever the former Green Arrow had to say was probably deserved and she was prepared for any physical pressure he might bring to the table.

He had aged fairly well, better than Bruce, and still moved with the easy grace of an extremely fit man. Chloe met him at the door, Tommy's other birthday present trailing along behind her. The puppy had yipped at him, following that up with a growl that would be a little more menacing when the dog was a little bigger, and Chloe scooped him up in one arm when she shut the door behind Oliver.

"Still taking in strays, I see," he said, glancing from her to Ace. The man shrugged off his coat and tossed it over the edge of an expensive chair that none of them ever sat on, making himself at home.

"Nice to see you too, Oliver," Chloe said, rolling her eyes. "I'm guessing you saw the front page of the Tattler."

"It was hard to miss, Chloe. Love the hair, by the way. Red suits you."

"What do you want, Oliver?" She set the puppy down and turned to face him.

"An explanation would be nice."

"Since when do I have to explain myself to you or anyone else?"

"Since you've taken up with him." The venom in Oliver's tone was unmistakable. "I just want to know what's going on, since it can't be what it looks like."

"And what exactly does it look like?"

"It looks like you and the Bat have a kid together, but I know you don't have a taste for dictators so something else is obviously going on."

"He isn't a dictator."

"That's not what it seemed like when I was put in jail for speaking out against the Justice Lords," he ground out. "What is going on?"

"Bruce needs a little help, so I'm staying with him and I brought Tommy with me. My son is none of your business."

"Yeah, that story will work for anyone who didn't know Bruce when he was a kid. Two of the most brilliant minds in the superhero business, and that was the best thing you two could come up with?"

"It's none of your business, Oliver," she repeated, glaring up at him. "Tommy and I are safe here and that's what matters." Chloe strode to the door, Ace still trailing after her, and opened it wide. "Go back to Star City, Oliver. We're managing just fine here in Gotham."

"You know he can't be trusted, Chloe." Oliver's voice was surprisingly gentle. "Whatever he's said, Bruce is going to turn this the way he wants to go. He's always been a cold-blooded manipulator at heart."

"I'm a big girl, Oliver. I can take care of myself." She watched him go, picking the puppy up again so that he didn't sneak out the front door. When Bruce moved quietly up behind her, the woman didn't turn to look at him. "Learn anything interesting?" she asked.

"You burned that bridge," Bruce stated.

"Just scorched it a little," she said, forcing out a wry smile. "Oliver and I have too much history to let a little thing like this get in the way forever."

"He doesn't know where you were when the Lords took power." It was another statement.

"It never came up," she said, shrugging. "Oliver was so angry over his own time in prison and the way Lois was treated that it felt a little redundant to mention that I spent that time locked up in a special cage on the Watchtower so that I was 'safe.'"

"You spent two years in the Tower before the Lords fell."

Chloe was getting a little tired of being told things she already knew. "If you have a question, Bruce, just ask it."

"Why do you trust me?"

"I don't trust you," she said bluntly. "Kent pretty much destroyed my ability to trust people. But I know you. And I know that you were doing what you thought was right. I forgave you for that a long time ago. That wasn't why I avoided you for so long." Chloe closed the door, set Ace back down on the floor, and turned to face him. "I can't forgive you for the same reason that I can't forgive myself. We should have stopped him. He should never have gone into the White House that day. Nothing he could have done there would have ended well." With that she stepped around him and hurried up the stairs.

The visit from the former Green Arrow opened the gates to a slew of communications from various costumed friends. Granted, most of them were just glad to know she was alive and were unaware that by aligning herself with Bruce Wayne she'd started working with Batman. Bruce, after all, had been incredibly cagy about his identity for most of his career, though most of the hero community had known or at least known of Chloe.

No one other than Oliver came to Wayne Manor, though she ended up meeting Linda Park in a little coffee shop in Gotham. That particular visit had been oddly comfortable and a refreshing change of pace from the telephone-delivered insults of Dick Grayson and the mournful disappointment of Tim Drake. Next time she might even bring Tommy. Linda would get a kick out of the kid.

In the weeks after the tabloid released those photos, she kept a much closer eye on the three remaining Justice League members. Bruce had refused to comment on the pictures, but he'd laid down the legal paperwork so Tommy wouldn't have any real obstacles when it came time for him to take over the company. All it would take was a really dedicated researcher to discover that much of the truth. Chloe had false documentation that could be used in the case of emergency that claimed she was the boy's mother, but there was a birth certificate, standardized test results, and Bruce's Will, all filed away legally and just waiting for some determined individual to dig them out.

Tommy's time with the handful of friends he had made at places like Cheezy Dan's and his dance class (don't ask) ebbed away in the name of security, and the boy was clearly unhappy that he couldn't see Dana or Chelsea or Howard whenever he wanted. She'd needed to practically shove him into friendships with kids his own age, but once he adjusted to the idea it was difficult to go a day without him asking to meet with one of them.

They didn't tell Tommy why they were worried, but he could clearly pick it up and had taken to sleeping with Ace in his room. Bruce allowed it for the simple reason he allowed anything else Tommy got away with: if it wasn't going to hurt anything and it brought the boy comfort, let it happen. It was that particular practice that probably saved the boy's life.

Bruce was still awake, doing some digging into a few situations that he'd been keeping an eye on. It was force of habit, something that had come close to driving him insane until Tommy had reopened the door to Barbara and the information could be passed along to someone who could do something about it.

He was focused on a grainy surveillance video from a warehouse that nearly predated Bruce himself when he heard a startled yip from upstairs, followed by a high-pitched growl that would probably become more intimidating in a year or so. Bruce stood up, reaching for the cane that was propped up next to the desk when there was another sharp sound from the animal. Ace was still just a puppy, but the one thing he'd insisted on when Tommy had pleaded for him was that the dog be well-trained. One yip was probably carelessness, but two with a growl between meant trouble. There was a batarang in his pocket and the cane in his hand, and he pressed the alarm button behind the telephone before he left the room. The situation would be (must be, had to be) taken care of without harm coming to his son.

After a few stiff steps, the movement loosened up his muscles a little and he ran through a little mental preparation as he headed quietly, if not quickly, down the hall to Tommy's bedroom. Chloe was coming out of her own bedroom, her mouth tight with worry, and Bruce waved her back, gesturing toward the cell in her hand and mouthing, "Barbara," at her. The woman nodded and stepped quietly back, soundlessly hurrying for the stairs.

Bruce forced himself to pause outside of the cracked-open door, listening intently for a few seconds, his hand on the cane going white with tension as he listened to the deep voice coming from inside. The batarang was in his other hand, and with one motion he used the cane to push open the door and flung the object across the room with hard-won precision.

John Stewart stumbled back at the unexpected assault, grunting out a Thanagarian curse as the batarang clipped his wrist hard enough for the man to lose sensation in the appendage. Bruce followed up with the cane, using the crooked end to hook the former Marine's ankle and drop him to the ground. Ace was now barking furiously, his small body tense with righteous doggy indignation. On the floor, Tommy was scrambling away from the man who'd been holding onto his arm, scooping up his puppy and darting around Bruce and out to the hallway. Bruce heard just enough to know that Chloe had the boy taken care of before he tuned out and turned his full attention to the man on the floor before him.

"You got old," John said as he stood up, his body deceptively loose. "Time was I could never have gotten in here in the first place."

Bruce inclined his head and didn't answer. He had nothing to say to the man in front of him. Any neutral feelings about him had been wiped out by the whispered threats he'd heard moments ago, and he'd never really had any positive ones toward the man.

"And there's that stoic Bat-face I've been missing so much. I was just thinking that I missed seeing someone with the same emotions as a statue."

"You have one chance," Bruce said, his voice low and angry. "Leave now. Don't come back."

"Or what? You gonna kill me, Batman?" John offered up an unpleasant smile. "You never liked that part of the job, as I remember. In fact, you were the one who came up with the idea for Superman to do the lobotomies on the worst of Arkham's nutjobs."

"You'd be surprised what I'm willing to do," Bruce gritted out, and God, he doesn't want to do this. He didn't want to kill a former colleague, trusted as much as he trusted any of the others, and especially didn't want to do so in his son's bedroom with Tommy right down the hall. He'd gotten soft and weak, and he recognized it, but that realization didn't make him like the prospect of bloodshed any more than he had before.

All this didn't mean he wouldn't eliminate the threat that John possesses to him and his son. Just that he didn't desire it.

"The kid is yours, right? Looks just like you, even sounds like you. Must make you proud to hear him talk like Batman." Bruce's eyes narrowed as John took a couple of steps closer. The Green Lantern had never really been a talker before. That had always been Wally's thing. The man was up to something. "Tell me, how did you talk Superman's piece on the side into something like this?"

Bruce remained still and focused, though his grip on the cane grew even tighter if that was possible. Stewart's opinion of Chloe didn't matter. Only what he was planning was of importance right now, and the man didn't really plan long-term. He was more focused on the immediate, which meant . . .Ithere/I.

An arm flashed out, the muscle and quickness of a lifelong soldier behind it, and Bruce only just dodged in time. John kept his balance, turning the missed blow into a dodge of his own as Bruce retaliated with his cane.

He had to end this. The longer this fight went on, the longer his son was in danger and the more damage would be done to all of them. His heart was pumping frantically and Bruce could already feel the warning signs of an incipient heart attack in the shortness of breath and tingling in his left arm. Stewart may have aged, but he hadn't really lost his edge. If this man saw a hole, he would slip right through, end Bruce with little ceremony, and move straight to Tommy.

He couldn't let that happen. So he gave the former Marine an opening of his own choosing.

Stewart slid in exactly like he knew the man would, taking him down to the floor hard, and Bruce could feel the crack of ribs in the blow. There would only be one shot to this, but to get it he'd have to lure in the other man. Bruce had to get much closer to the man who wanted to kill him, so he took the punishment without complaint, feeling the pain sear his chest as his quest for oxygen became even more difficult.

The broken ribs were followed by a boot to the kidneys. Seems the Green Lantern had learned to fight dirty. The other man could have ended the fight by now; the momentary distraction of his broken ribs would have left enough space to break his neck for a trained Marine. But Bruce knew that he wouldn't be given an easy death by any of the other Justice Lords. He'd been counting on it.

Bruce had trained with the best martial arts teachers in the world and he'd continued the training for as long as he was physically able. But the thing he'd always admired about such disciplines was the way the mind was used in conjunction with the body. And if there was one thing anyone could say about Batman, it was that he had a mind like a steel trap.

He had never performed this particular nerve strike before, and it had been years since he'd done anything even remotely similar. But when Stewart leaned in and reached for his neck, Batman struck, moving as swiftly and instinctively as he ever had to a specific place on the other man's neck.

The blow called for precision rather than force, which was a good thing when you were in the middle of a heart attack. One moment John Stewart was standing over him with an oddly happy smile on his face, and the next he was a groaning and completely immobile figure that had collapsed on top of him.

Hmm, thought Bruce as the world around him swam and faded, it's possible I didn't think this one through.

The hospital wasn't any better this time around, even though Chloe was here and could find things out for him. It still smelled funny and was too crowded, and the nurses still treated him like he was some kind of baby, even though he was nine years old now and definitely old enough to know what was going on.

Detective Gordon came in and out, updating Chloe on what was going on with the guy who'd hurt his dad. Tommy didn't care about that guy, he just wanted to know what was going on with his dad, and he told Chloe so.

Chloe looked a little sad for a moment. "Bruce will want to know about him, kiddo."

"Why? He hurt Dad."

Chloe bit her lip. "That doesn't matter to your dad. He didn't want to hurt . . . that guy, but he had to so he could protect you. That's the kind of guy your dad is."

A doctor walked up to them at that moment, tall and skinny and balding, and Tommy turned his full attention to the man. This was what was important.

"He'll pull through," the doctor said wearily. "Mr. Wayne is a real fighter, it seems. There's damage, of course, though we won't know the full extent for a few days, but he should be just fine."

"Can we see him?"

"He's sedated right now. We're moving him to the ICU, and if everything goes well he'll be stabilized enough to go to the cardiac wing by tomorrow afternoon."

It all went pretty much the way the doctor had said. His dad stayed in the hospital a week this time around before coming home, pale and worn out and impatient. The guy who broke into the house was buried three days later, and Dad insisted on going without Chloe. Tommy didn't know why the man's death made his father sad, but it did.

Dad was quiet and short-tempered for a while as he recovered from the heart attack, and Chloe took Tommy out on a few trips whenever his dad needed time alone. Once she took him to meet a friend of hers named Linda, and they went to the Flash museum in Central City. Dad had smiled when Tommy had enthusiastically filled him in on how awesome the Flash had been.

Things slowly went back to normal. Tommy got to go back to his classes and visit his friends again, and his dad got better and started playing with him. Life was good.

Barbara knew that something like this was inevitable from the beginning. Tom had the DNA of one of the greatest detectives in the world running through his veins and had been raised by a woman who practically defined inquisitive and somewhere along the way he'd started showing signs of a quick, hot temper that he'd gotten from neither one and that was increasingly difficult to manage. The only mystery in the entire situation was how he'd made it to sixteen without discovering the cave and heading off in a snit.

When Bruce made the call informing her that the teenager had left the house and taken a batsuit with him (of course the most advanced one, the one that Bruce hadn't worn for very long), she could hear Chloe talking frantically in the background, so quick it could almost be called babbling. It was one of the few tells Chloe really had: the more worried she was, the faster her speech became. Bruce, predictably, kept talking at a measured pace, and if she hadn't known him for far longer than was healthy she wouldn't have been able to tell that he shared a similar level of concern. "He disabled the tracker in the suit when he left," the man said, and there was almost a note of pride beneath the worry. "Chloe's on the computer in the cave, trying to find some sightings if she can, but he already knew how to hide."

"I'll keep an eye out, but he's your kid, Bruce. He'll surface when he's ready, not before then."

Barbara closed the connection and waited. It didn't take long.

"Did you know?" The young man stepped into her apartment from the fire escape wearing the last of Bruce's suits, this one all-black with a red bat-symbol emblazoned on the front. He yanked the cowl off his head and met her gaze with furious ice-blue eyes. "Did you know about this?"

"Yes," Barbara said, and the boy's face crumbled. "A lifetime ago, I was wearing something similar to what you are now."

"So you were Batgirl," he said, his voice quiet but no less deadly for it. "Dad was Batman, and Chloe was, what, Wonder Woman?"

"Chloe never wore a suit. She was more the brains and motivator behind several different superheroes back in the old days."

"All this time and they never told me, never said a word." He sank down onto her couch, and despite the fact that he was taller than her and could probably take out anyone short of Superman, all she could see was that eight-year-old boy who had looked to her for reassurance when his father was lying in a hospital bed. "My father was a dictator who came close to destroying the world, and I was born to pick up where he left off."

Barbara sat down next to him. "Do you know who you were named after?"

"My grandfather," Tommy answered, looking down at his feet. It was sullen and sulky and utterly unlike the bright, good-natured boy she knew.

"No, your full name. Thomas Wallace Wayne." The boy shook his head. "You already knew that Thomas Wayne was your grandfather. But the Wallace came from someone entirely different. Someone that knew both Bruce and Batman."

Tom looked up with horror. "Tell me I'm not named after one of the Lords."

"They weren't always the Justice Lords. Once upon a time, they were known as the Justice League, and there were seven of them, not six. And you were named after that member. You were named after the Flash."

He was quiet for several long moments, taking in that information. "What happened?" he finally asked, his voice reminiscent of that little boy from eight years ago.

"The League wanted to help protect people. They formed to fight off alien invaders and to help each other with criminals who were a little too much for one person to handle. And then one day the Flash got a little too close to something that Lex Luthor wanted to keep hidden, and Lex took him out.

"The people who write the history books will never be able to explain why the League changed over from guardians to rulers. You had to be there, you had to know the Flash to understand. He was one of the most underestimated heroes around because he never seemed to take anything seriously, always had a joke and a goofy smile as he zipped around. But once you knew Wally for two minutes, you felt like you'd known him your whole life. He was smart and funny and he believed in people, and that's why his death hit the league so hard.

"They wanted to make sure something like that could never happen again, and they had the power and support to do it."

"So they just took over the governments and people let them?" His voice was laden with disbelief.

"It was the Justice League," Barbara said. "People believed in them. They were our greatest heroes, and they really just wanted to help at first."

"And Dad was right there with them, making sure that it happened."

"Very few people see themselves as the villain, sweetheart. Bruce was doing what it takes to make people completely safe. He was creating a world where no child gets orphaned because someone picks up a gun and waits in an alley to mug an unsuspecting couple."

"So why did they stop?"

"No one knows that but them, and your father never talks about it. One day the others no longer had their powers and Batman was nowhere to be found. He came back to Gotham and was out on the streets again within six months, but it was back to the way it had been in the old days."

"So where do I fit in?" He was still studying the cowl in his hands. "Am I just a convenient replacement because he couldn't do the job anymore?"

Barbara went through a retinue of mental curses. Why was she the one stuck answering this question? "Your father loves you the best he can and that's what's important. Everything else is just window dressing," she finally said. "And Chloe is currently hacking everything she can get into just to figure out where you are. You should let her know you're safe before she does something that I'll need to arrest her for."

He shifted in his seat and looked up at her. "Is there anything else they're hiding from me?"

"That's something you need to ask them. I do know that if you hadn't run off like a melodramatic thirteen-year-old, they'd be answering any questions you had right now."

"Yeah, I guess it was a little over-the-top," he admitted. "I'm kinda hoping they don't bring it up when I get back home."

"With the batsuit," Barbara prompted. "Which is a whole new level of melodramatic, let me tell you."

"Yeah, what's with that anyway?"

"Another thing you should ask your father about. The two of them have some pretty long stories to tell, and it's time they were told." She watched as the young man stood up and slipped the mask back over his face. He turned and looked at her when he got to the fire escape, and she could see the thanks on his face. Then he stepped off the metal railing and disappeared into the night.

Barbara shut the window behind him. Bruce and Chloe were in for a long night.

Tommy had tried to re-enter the mansion without being detected, but one didn't spend a lifetime as Batman without learning how to predict the moves of both allies and opponents, no matter how careful they were. His father and Chloe were waiting for him when he slid the window open and slipped into his bedroom.

"Are you ready to talk?" Dad didn't give anything away, and Chloe was much the same, though she did stand up make an awkward, aborted attempt to embrace him.

"Let me change," Tommy said, doing a remarkable job of keeping his voice even. "I'll meet you downstairs in the kitchen."

His father nodded and hobbled away. Chloe lingered for a moment before she followed, her mouth twisted in an unfamiliar frown. Ace sat up and stretched, and Tommy dropped down onto the bed with a sigh and scratched the dog behind the ears. "At least I know everything there is to know about you," he said.

Chloe had unsurprisingly started a pot of coffee and was already cradling a mug in her hands. His father had a cup in front of him as well, although he was willing to bet that it didn't contain coffee. That particular beverage was on Dr. Emmagen's list and was strictly rationed by Chloe as a result.

Tommy reached for the pot and his own cup, ignoring the pointed glare from Chloe. "I'm pretty sure that tonight calls for it," he said, forestalling any comments. She nodded her agreement without a snarky comment, which surprised him, and went to sit down at the table. Tommy joined them after thoroughly diluting his beverage with milk and sugar, sitting in his usual seat with only a little trepidation. Ace, who had been forbidden from the kitchen since he was a puppy, settled down in the doorway with a sigh.

"Enjoying your nice hot cup of Josephine?" Chloe asked, but it was clearly a routine jab with no real amusement behind it, a little bit of teasing at how Tommy took his coffee that failed to lift her spirits. She looked troubled now as she sat at the table sipping her own black coffee.

"Ask your questions," his father said, gruff voice belied by the sadness in his eyes.

"I don't know enough to have questions," Tommy replied. "All I know is what little I've picked up studying history. I need you to tell me what happened. Tell me everything."

"I don't think we have enough coffee for that," Chloe muttered, glancing across the table at the grim figure there.

"Try," the young man said, his gaze fierce. "You can start with why you became Batman in the first place."

"That's one of the few things you should know," Bruce said. "Everything I've done in my life was for the same reason. I want a world where no child loses their parents because of some punk with a gun." The words came out in a low growl.

"Everything?" Tommy asked, studying his father with angry eyes. "Even me?"

"You're my son and I love you," he answered immediately. "There's nothing I wouldn't do for you."

"Who was my mother?"

The abrupt subject change was jarring, and for a moment Bruce had to think about the question. "Her name was Mary."

"Did you love her?"

His father hesitated for several long moments, glancing over at Chloe and receiving nothing in return. "I didn't really know her."

"Isn't that part of the process?"

Another glance at Chloe, and then his father finally met Tom's eyes. "I wanted a son. The mother didn't matter to me as long as she was healthy."

"And after I was born she just left?"

"She never knew about you. At the time, I only needed a donor, not a partner. So I took what I needed from a fertility clinic." This was said matter-of-factly, much in the same way his father would explain a business deal to him, and Tommy felt a shiver run down his back.

He forced it all back and away and focused back onto the bigger picture. "The Justice Lords."

Bruce dropped his gaze a little, shifting it to the doorway and the dog reclining there. "It shouldn't have happened," he admitted. "I shouldn't have let it happen."

"Are you trying to tell me it wasn't your fault?"

"Of course it was my fault," the old man bit out. "I didn't stop it. I could have kept it from happening, done something to divert it or lessen it, and I chose not to. The blame for the Justice Lords falls on me."

"Stop apologizing for something that wasn't your fault," Chloe said, the pitch of her voice rising from its normal alto. "Superman made his decision the same as you, and unlike you I don't think he ever regretted it. Take it from someone who knows, when he made up his mind no one could ever change it."

"We both know I had Kryptonite on hand," Bruce said simply. "If I had really wanted to, I could have stopped him."

"In the interest of getting my questions actually answered, can you two have this argument later?" Tommy looked over at the woman next to him. "Barbara said you had a story to tell too."

Chloe looked startled. "Don't you want to know more about Batman?"

"I think I'm happy with the highlights right now. It's a lot to take in." The teenager smiled suddenly, for the first time since he'd stumbled upon the cave hours ago. Somehow just hearing his father's version of it had made this whole situation a little more bearable. "We'll give my dad a break and let you take a turn."

"My story isn't quite as big as Bruce's," she warned.

"What, no skeletons in your closet?"

She smiled, but the gesture didn't really have the right emotion behind it. "Plenty of skeletons. But they're more Ewoks than Wookies."

"Let's have it."

"Do you remember the first trip we ever took together?"

Tommy blinked at the nonsequiter. "A little, yeah. Some farm town out in the middle of nowhere." He remembered laying out in the middle of a field looking up at the stars while Chloe explained why places like that were important.

"Smallville, Kansas. I lived there once, a long time ago. And so did Superman."

"Superman worked out of Metropolis," Tommy said, frowning slightly.

Chloe sighed and he could tell that talking about this at all bothered her. "Years before he was Superman, he was a teenager on a farm in Kansas named Clark Kent. We went to high school together and he was my best friend. I'm the one who encouraged him to put on the suit and I encouraged him to start the Justice League, so what happened with the Lords was at least partly my fault."

"You did the same for Wally," his father said, and Tommy's head swiveled over in his direction. It was the second time that night he'd heard the name, but this time he knew he was about to get a little more information on the man he was named after.

"Yeah, and look how that turned out," Chloe said bitterly, taking a long swallow of her coffee. "He'd still be a skinny geek working in Forensics if I hadn't talked him into the superhero business."

"No. If it hadn't been for the Flash, there would never have been a League in the first place. There's no way we would have been able to stay together without him. There were far too many Alpha personalities in that room. The only way we could stay together as the Lords was self-preservation."

"I hate to interrupt, but if you went to high school with Superman, shouldn't you be kind of . . .old?"

Chloe sighed. "I'm a meta, Tommy. I age a lot slower than I should. It's not a big deal."

His father actually managed a smirk. "And she comes back from the dead."

She glared at him. "Well, yeah, there's that. Which still isn't that important. It's not exactly superspeed or strength or the ability to fly."

"And then there's the healing thing."

"Enough with the recitation, Bruce!" Chloe turned back to Tommy, rolling her eyes. "Those things were never as important as what I wanted to do, and they never defined me the way powers did for most other people. And none of this matters to this particular discussion."

"I thought the point of this was so I could learn about my parents," Tommy said, deciding in that moment to forgive them both for the lies he'd been told. Barbara had been right about one thing in particular: what really mattered in this situation was that they loved him. He'd never doubted that from them, just everything else, and he had a feeling the rest of it would settle out. "You two are telling me everything."

Chloe grinned, a brilliant joyful smile that reminded him of his childhood. "Some of those stories are a little too much for tender ears, kiddo."

"Come on, I'm sixteen."

"Just a sweet wee thing," she teased, and his father actually cracked a smile at Tommy's scowl.

"Perhaps we can continue this in the morning," he suggested. "It's a little late, even for me."

"I think you mean early," Chloe commented, glancing out the kitchen window at the pink edge of dawn.

"But we will be talking," Tommy said, his voice turning a little serious. "You guys aren't getting out of this."

"Believe me, I know," his father grumbled, using his cane and the back of his chair to stand up. His first few steps were stiff, and Tommy knew that he wasn't imagining the worried look on Chloe's face as she watched him head to the door. They both knew better than to offer help, but that didn't make watching his father limp along any easier.

"It'll go easier with sleep and food," Chloe promised, following his father from the room.

Tommy remained at the table for a few minutes, finishing off his now-cold coffee and trying his best not to think about the events of the past day. He was exhausted, but his mind was still whirling and unsettled by what he had learned. His father had never really detailed how and why he'd been born, but Tommy found himself suddenly not caring. His family was weird and screwed-up, but they loved each other and they were family. It would all work out eventually.

He didn't remember going to bed, but Tommy woke up with his head on the familiar pillow around noon. Considering the turmoil of the past day, sleep had been hard and solid and undisturbed by dreams.

Chloe was awake but ungroomed, her shoulder-length red hair tangled around her face. She was clutching her ever-present mug of coffee (ironically, dosed with milk and sugar in the morning) and sipping at it with a blissful expression. "Your father needs some time to himself," she said, looking up with bleary hazel eyes. "You want some breakfast?"

"I'll handle it. You?"

She slumped down a little in her chair. "Any bagels left?"

"No."

The woman muttered a curse that he probably wasn't supposed to hear. "You go to work for a billionaire, you expect that you won't run out of bagels. Or coffee, which we're getting really low on." She gulped down the scalding hot beverage and stood up. "Want to go on a grocery run with me?"

Tommy shrugged. He didn't particularly like grocery shopping, but it was probably better than hanging around the house waiting for his father to wake up. He had a couple of projects due in the next couple of days, though he had a feeling he could get an extension from Dad right now. "Can we get some things other than bagels and coffee?"

"Sure. We're low on pretty much everything." She grinned at him from the doorway. "Can't let your dad run out of that nasty green tea he likes so much."

It was only after they got back and Tommy had busied himself with a dusty stack of books, research for a paper on British authors of the 19th century that Chloe had assigned, that he realized he was stalling, putting off the next discussions with Chloe and his dad.

He knew what he wanted to do from here. His brief time in the suit had been both exhilarating and terrifying, and he had every intention of doing it again. Batman had meant something to Gotham once upon a time, and if Thomas Wallace Wayne had anything to say about it, he would again.

The real trouble would be convincing the mother-hen grown-ups of that fact. He wasn't sure how to go about it, what argument would be successful while ruffling as few feathers as possible. His father and Chloe could be the most magnanimous winners in existence, but if you battered your way toward winning a fight with either one of them you would pay dearly for the victory. The key was logic, usually, though Chloe was a little more easily swayed by emotion than the stoic Bruce Wayne.

He half-heartedly tried to focus on the paper for a few minutes before setting it aside. After the night he'd had last night, he knew he should be exhausted, but instead Tommy found himself feeling restless. Wandering around the house turned into a spur-of-the moment gymnastics workout in the gym, which took the edge off but didn't remove the sensation entirely. He showered downstairs and headed into the kitchen, hungry now on top of the uneasiness, and then headed back upstairs with a sandwich. The young man was about to duck into his bedroom when he heard the voices.

"You know what he wants, Bruce," said Chloe. "It always works that way. Putting on the suit and going into the night to save people is the most instantly addicting drug in existence. One hit is all it ever takes to get hooked. Believe me, I know."

"I don't want my son out there in that suit for the adrenaline rush," his father growled. "If he takes on the responsibility, it has to be for the right reasons. Otherwise it means nothing."

"No one ever starts this business for the right reasons," Chloe said wearily. "Even Clark and Wally had things to prove, and they were always the best of us."

There was a silence from both of them, long enough for Tommy to duck into his own room and put down his snack before sneaking back into the hallway. The walls of the manor were too thick to make listening there profitable.

"Maybe it would be best for him to start up a new legacy," he heard his father say. "I'm not sure if Batman can be redeemed."

"That's not what you thought a few years ago," Chloe said, her tone scolding. "I've never known you to back down from a challenge, and I can without a doubt say the same thing about your son. It's way past the time for doubts on this, Bruce."

Tommy chose that moment to step into the room. His father didn't look away from the window, though Chloe smiled at him from the man's side. "This is my heritage," he said, his voice even but unmistakeably firm. "I want to do this."

"It will probably destroy you," Bruce said, his voice deeper and more rough than the young man had ever heard it. "It always does."

"My choice. Train me, dad. Teach me." Tommy stood his ground and held his father's gaze. "I deserve this chance."

Finding out about his heritage had made a few things much clearer for Tommy. Some of his education, for example, was more than a little unique. The languages and psychology lessons he'd been given since he was six could be explained away as a necessity for someone who would be running a billion-dollar corporation, but he'd been taking martial arts for as long as he could remember. There had been basic forensic measures couched in discussions of Sherlock Holmes, and last year Chloe had tried to teach him how to block telepathy (a wasted effort on a hormonal teenage boy, but he would probably revisit those lessons sometime soon.)

There was also his fondness for the night. He'd traveled all through his childhood and into his teenage years, at first just with his father and then with Chloe, and the one constant thing that he took away from these places was the way the night had felt at that particular place. Unlike the other children his age that he'd met, he'd never been scared of the dark. In fact, being alone and awake in the middle of the night was one of the things he most enjoyed. Chloe's jokes about being just like his father made more sense now.

He was his father's son, and he was proud of it.

There was a flash of movement beneath him, and Batman stood up from his crouch on the roof. It was time to go to work.

He stepped forward, wings open and the night breeze cool against him even with his skin covered by the material of his suit, and leapt into the night. It was time to reintroduce Gotham to Batman.


End file.
